A serious look at the DC Universe that doesn't take itself too seriously

Monday, June 21, 2010

JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #3

“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue”

Script: Judd Winick

Breakdowns: Keith Giffen

Penciller: Fernando Dagnino

Inker: Bit & Raul Fernandez

Editor: Michael Siglain

Synopsis

Fire flies to the Castle, Checkmate’s headquarters in the Swiss Alps, and learns that she has been relieved of duty because she failed her psychological exam.While she tries to explain her actions to the Black King, she sees Maxwell Lord and attacks him.After a frantic chase through the Castle, Fire captures Lord, only to see that it’s not really him at all.She flees, confused.Meanwhile, Booster Gold, Ice, Captain Atom and Skeets aid the new Blue Beetle against an army of OMACs.When the cyborgs teleport away, the former J.L.I.ers follow, arriving in Russia.As the heroes attempt to gather their wits, they find themselves under attack by the Rocket Red Brigade…

Notes

Page 1:Fire last appeared in Justice League: Generation Lost #2.

Checkmate is the United Nation’s official meta-human monitoring force.Their headquarters is a castle in the Swiss Alps known appropriately as “The Castle.”

Remember that, while he was in charge of Checkmate, Maxwell Lord was also known as “the Black King.”

While she was a member of Checkmate, Fire was the Black King’s Knight.

Page 3:The Blue Beetle, Booster Gold and the OMACs last appeared in Justice League: Generation Lost #2.

“OMACs have people inside them, Jaime!”OMACs are actually humans, invaded by a virus and transformed into cyborgs with the purpose of hunting down and killing meta-humans.

Jaime Reyes’ family includes his father Alberto, his mother Bianca, and his sister Milagro.

According to this story, the full-name for an OMAC is an “Observational Metahuman Activity Construct.”

Page 4:Ice, Captain Atom and Skeets last appeared in Justice League: Generation Lost #2.

“Only through great effort and sacrifice were they defeated.”Batman and a small group of heroes destroyed the Brother Eye satellite and eliminated the threat of the OMACs in Infinite Crisis #6.

Page 5:Alberto Reyes attempted to aid his former employee Luis, who had gotten into trouble with criminals, but was shot in the leg.Thus, he is forced to use a cane.

Page 8:“When you are doing wet-work for Amanda Waller here at Checkmate?”After Checkmate reformed in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, Waller blackmailed Fire with evidence against her father and forced her to commit assassinations.

“Bea…Your father was a psychopath.A military monster who orchestrated a genocide.”Fire’s father was Ramon Corvalho, who, in the 1970s, ordered thousand of deaths as part of a South American anti-communist program involving assassinations, torture and disappearances.

Page 9:Max Lord last appeared in Justice League: Generation Lost #2.Whether or not Max is really there or he’s just a mental illusion, as with his appearance at the air force base to Captain Atom, has yet to be revealed.

Page 10:“She’s vapor in flame form!”Fire is able to transform into a being of pure plasma; as such she is intangible and unable to be affected physically.

Page 14:“Evaluating lethal maneuvers.”Blue Beetle’s Scarab really likes to calculate the number of lethal ways in which to attack and otherwise kill its targets.Jaime constantly has to tell the Scarab to seek out non-fatal ways to incapacitate his foes.

But how in the world did he know that 6,209.1225 is approximately 17 years?I mean, he’s right, but I used my calculator to figure that out.Is he a mathematical savant all of the sudden?

Page 17:“The hell we are!Get me out of this!”Ice really wants nothing to do with this situation; she’s the odd-woman out.

Page 18:“Something goes all to crap, then a pile of heroes shows up and zap me off to space!Or another dimension!” A blown-out-of-proportion, although somewhat accurate, interpretation of Infinite Crisis #5-6, and Blue Beetle (second series) #7, in which Jaime tags along with Batman and company to destroy Brother Eye.

By the way, Blue Beetle (second series) refers to the second series published by DC Comics.There seems to have been about seven other Blue Beetle series throughout the years, but I’m not about to touch those with a ten-foot pole.Trying to keep all of the Firestorm series straight in my head is difficult enough…

Page 20:Long story short, for some reason, a J.L.I. signal belonging to Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle, attempted to hack into Jaime’s armor.The Scarab bounced the signal away, and then Booster and then Skeets detected the signal.

So the question remains, who sent the signal in the first place?And what is their connection to Ted Kord?

“He used to be on our team.”Technically, two Rocket Reds were a part of the J.L.I.The first was Rocket Red #7, Vladimir Mikoyan, who was revealed to be a Manhunter spy during Millennium.The second, Dmitri Pushkin, was killed in The OMAC Project #5.